CWI has started the construction of a new supercomputer cluster in the beginning of October 2003. The cluster, consisting of 48 dual and quad AMD Opteron systems, is the first quad Opteron cluster in the Benelux. The new supercomputer, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO, is expected to be operational in two months.
The cluster replaces the current SGI supercomputer. It is three times faster than the old computer even though its price is ten times lower. In addition the cluster can easily be upgraded by adding new nodes or components like interconnects and memory chips. CWI scientists will use the computer for research in fields like multi-media databases, machine learning, software engineering and cryptography.
